Final Exam

Due date is Wednesday Dec 13th at noon

Presentations will take place Wednesday December 13th from 3:30 to 5:30 in the usual room

Seeing Red

This final exam will give you  a chance to think about the various things that you have done and read about in the course. We have talked about a variety of techniques, often in isolation. Here we will look at them in a more realistic situation. In particular you will use your class experience to critique some computer graphics animation.

We are going to use 'Gerry Anderson's New Captain Scarlet' as our CG to critique. I wanted to pick something that people have very likely not seen before, something that is new, something that has a variety of environments, and also something that was done on a limited budget of time and money. The two seasons of this TV series were shown in 2005.

More info on the series is available on wikipedia at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerry_Anderson%27s_New_Captain_Scarlet

I have chosen three episodes of the series and assigned 1/3 of the class to each episode. This should lead to a variety of scenes being chosen for critique.

Episode 7 of Season 2 - Syrtis Major
Santoro
Uphoff
Kamineni
Gorski
Chen
Rabindran
Bernasconi

Episode 10 of Season 2 - Duel
Tretti
Tran
Iyer
Buss
Svistula
Febretti
Grace

Episode 11 of Season 2 - Shape Shifter
Vaccari
Bhatt
Vishu
Santanakrishnan
Jagodic
Krishnamoorthy
Ipaguirre
Kamisetty


You should choose a 30 second segment from the episode and then create a web page that disects / critiques / discusses the computer graphics animation used in that segment. You should first describe what techniques are used in that segment (motion capture, particle systems, physics, keyframe animation, etc) and remember to consider the background as well as the foreground, then discuss what worked and what didn't work - why doesn't the motion look realistic given what we have talked about in class, then describe to how to fix the things that didnt work. Be sure to also tell me the time code for the start and end of the scene you are critiquing.

You should use screen captures to illustrate your points. You may want to annotate those screen captures  (arrows, circles, etc.) to more specifically highlight what you are talking about.

You should look at a sequence of shots, not just a single shot. The sequence of shots gives you context about how people / things should be moving. Pick a sequence that has some interesting animation so you will have enough to write about. You are not critiquing the writing of the series or the voice acting, just the CG.

You should write 2500 words, and here I am talking about something much more like a research paper than composition 101; the words should be insightful and not just take up space. Organizing your text with sections and headings to increase readability is also highly recommeded
Each person will give a short 5 minute presentation on their critique using the web pages that you created. Since everyone in the class will be presenting within a 2 hour period, there won't be time to swap in/out different computers or to use powerpoint. Make sure you have a backup web site in case your primary one is down during class.

The work is due at noon on Dec 13th. By then you should have sent me a link to your web page so I can have all the links ready for the presentations that afternoon.

last revision 11/26/06